Project Solara: Welcome to Agent-First Hardware

After months of conferences and busy schedules, Mark Tucker and Allen Firstenberg return to discuss Microsoft’s surprising Build conference announcement: Project Solara. Moving from the legacy voice-first consumer world of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, Microsoft is pioneering a secure, business-focused "Agent-first" platform. In this episode, we unpack Microsoft's two new concept devices, a desktop smart display and a wearable camera-equipped badge, and explore the Android Open Source Project (AOSP)-based platform behind them: the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP). We discuss how Project Solara integrates enterprise security standards like Intune, Windows Hello for Business, and Entra ID to allow agents to act on behalf of authenticated users. We also dive into the future-proof promise of "Just In Time UI" (Generative UI) which dynamically adapts interfaces to any form factor, and explore how these agentic tools could liberate deskless workers from being "slaves to a slab of glass." More Info: * https://commandline.microsoft.com/project-solara-build-2026/ Timestamps: [00:00:00] Intro & Catching Up [00:00:49] Transitioning from Voice-First (Alexa/Assistant) to Agent-First [00:01:35] Designing for Echo Show and Google Assistant vs. GenAI [00:02:37] Project Solara: Custom Agentic Devices for Business [00:03:09] Google Glass & the Early Spark for Enterprise Use Cases [00:04:30] Smart Displays and Wearable Badge Concept Hardware [00:05:12] Built on Android (AOSP) vs. Google's Android XR [00:05:46] Security: Microsoft MDEP, Intune, and Alexa for Business [00:07:10] Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) on Azure [00:08:41] Just-In-Time UI & Generative UI [00:12:09] Developer Availability and Future Outlook [00:13:26] Rethinking Computers: Lessons from Google Glass & Assistant [00:14:32] Wrap Up and Future Form Factors (Watches, Rings, Glasses) #ProjectSolara #MicrosoftBuild #AgentFirst #VoiceFirst #MDEP #GenerativeUI #GenUI #AOSP #BYOA #EnterpriseTech #TwoVoiceDevs Episode 274